Nobel Laureate proves rewards of selflessness

A Nobel Laureate for peace was in the backyard of my Ventura home on Memorial Day. He was addressing a gathering of around 200, explaining his projects aimed at eradicating poverty from the world. Since then, I have been inundated with queries as to how a person of such stature landed in my backyard.

It is very rare for a Nobel Laureate to be found addressing a spellbound audience of ordinary people in the backyard of an ordinary person’s home. However, in this case, a world-famous person decided to stand underneath a tent in the backyard of his friend’s home to deliver a speech open to all.

It is a normal tendency of human beings to try to establish relationships with world-famous personalities whenever they see an opportunity. So, if I feel tempted to claim I have a Nobel Laureate friend, I cannot be blamed for that. However, the problem associated with making such claims is that it always leads to self-glorification.

Therefore, I have decided not to concentrate on myself, but to elaborate on the qualities and achievements of an individual with whom I grew up, went to the same school and worked at the same institution. My intention is to introduce a person who had a humble beginning in an impoverished country, yet, was able to attract the attention of the world and, eventually, win a Nobel Prize. I am talking about Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh who won the Nobel Prize for peace in 2006.

I first came to know about Yunus in 1960 when I was a college student in Bangladesh. He excelled in almost all extracurricular activities, winning awards, writing in college journals, participating in debates, cultural shows and sports. He, along with his two brothers, was always on top of everything.

Seed of greatness

After he won the Nobel Prize, I started reconstructing that period of my life with him, only to be amazed by discovering the seed of his hidden greatness. My recollection brought me to the realization that he was a very different person. While self- improvement was always my goal, he was concerned about the well-being of people around him and getting involved in such activities as raising funds for the cyclone victims in Bangladesh.

In 1963, after teaching in several colleges, I found an opportunity to start a college in a community called Hathazari. Incidentally, that was Yunus’ hometown. While I was busy raising funds and constructing a new building for the college, Yunus was studying in the United States for his doctorate. He returned in 1972 with a doctorate in economics and started teaching at Chittagong University, which was located in Hathazari.

However, Yunus was not only teaching. He started working with the villagers, establishing in 1974 his “Nabajug Tevaga Samiti” (New Age Three Shares Association). Its purpose was to let landless farmers cultivate the lands they were working and get one share out of three of the crop in return. Later, in 1977, he established his “Grameen Prokalpa” (Village Project), and I believe he then conceived his soon-to-become-world-famous “Grameen Bank” (Village Bank), which is based on his concept of microcredit.

My intention here is not to explain in detail his concepts of microcredit, by which he was able to eradicate poverty from many rural people’s lives in Bangladesh and other countries, and help liberate village women from the grip of misery, but to draw attention to the fact that, at that time he was working selflessly, he was not aspiring for fame. ‘Rather, his detractors were criticizing him for changing the traditional way of women’s lives in Bangladesh. Undaunted, he kept up the good work.

In the meantime, I found a job at the University of Chittagong in 1976. Yunus was there in the Department of Economics. This is how we became co-workers. In 1979, I left Chittagong University to receive higher education in the United States. The difference between Yunus and me was that he decided to return to his country after his studies in the United States and immediately started teaching and working for the poor villagers; on the other hand, I decided to stay here for my own benefit.

Thinking about others

The purpose of writing this, therefore, is to emphasize the fact that always striving for personal glorification and personal achievement will not help the cause of establishing world peace. In our personal lives, we should always think about how to help people, instead of being self-centered. Likewise, for a community, society or country, it is not a good idea to think about self-interest. We should think globally, not locally, the same as we should think not only about ourselves, but also about others.

This kind of thinking made Dr. Muhammad Yunus a very different kind of human being. That is why when I invited him to come to my home after his speaking engagement at CSU Channel Islands, he did not hesitate.